Expensive to get wrongEuropean UnionBeauty & personal care

The ingredient list is required on the pack itself

A cosmetic product may be made available on the European Union market only where its container and packaging bear, in indelible and easily legible lettering, a list of ingredients preceded by the word ingredients, in descending order of weight, with anything below one per cent listable in any order and every nanomaterial followed by the word nano in brackets.

The obligation attaches to the packaging rather than to the web page, so a storefront that omits the list online is not breaching this rule, which is why the gap between what a pack must say and what a product page chooses to say is a decision rather than an oversight.

Limits how to read The shelf sells on ingredients and rarely explains them

94 of a possible 97Tier A, primary document or measured outcome. Nothing at this tier is allowed past 97, however good it looks.

Verified August 5, 2026Rechecked every 365 days, next by August 5, 2027.

Constraint

Held since July 11, 2013A rule, law or policy that limits what you may do or say. The earliest date we are willing to say this held. It may well have been true before that; we do not backdate a record past the evidence we have read. Supported, version 1.

This entry is wrong if

Article 19(1)(g) is repealed, or the ingredient list is made optional, or the descending-weight ordering requirement is dropped.

Written before the record was published, not after. If you can show this, send it to hello@tryorbt.com and the correction goes on the record with the entry.

Evidence

Tier Aregulation
Publications Office of the European Union: Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products
a list of ingredients. This information may be indicated on the packaging alone. The list shall be preceded by the term ‘ingredients’.
Read 2026-08-05 · Open government · page hash 858298b0649b
Tier Aregulation
Publications Office of the European Union: Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products
The list of ingredients shall be established in descending order of weight of the ingredients at the time they are added to the cosmetic product. Ingredients in concentrations of less than 1 % may be listed in any order after those in concentrations of more than 1 %. All ingredients present in the form of nanomaterials shall be clearly indicated in the list of ingredients. The names of such ingredients shall be followed by the word ‘nano’ in brackets.
Read 2026-08-05 · Open government · page hash 858298b0649b

History

v1createdAugust 5, 2026
Initial entry from primary regulator text outside the United States, read 2026-08-05. EUR-Lex is behind a bot challenge we do not work around, so this text comes from the Publications Office Cellar service under content negotiation, which is the documented machine-readable route to the same Official Journal document.

Append-only. Nothing in this list is edited or removed once written, including the entries that record our own mistakes. Every change to every record is on the corrections page, and the same log is in entries.json under revisions.

eu
labelling
ingredients
inci
compliance
beauty

Cite this entry

“The ingredient list is required on the pack itself”, The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, entry omr:eu:the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement, retrieved September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/eu--the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129

Orbt, "The ingredient list is required on the pack itself," Orbt Market Index, entry omr:eu:the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement, verified August 5, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/eu--the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement.

@misc{orbt-eu-the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement,
  title        = {The ingredient list is required on the pack itself},
  author       = {{Orbt}},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.22679129},
  note         = {The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0 (dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22679129), entry omr:eu:the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement. Verified 2026-08-05},
  howpublished = {\url{https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/eu--the-ingredient-list-is-a-packaging-requirement}},
  license      = {Orbt Index Public Licence. Free to quote and cite; not to redistribute}
}

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